


this twilight (how dare you speak of grace)

by fishycorvid



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: 8 pages on google docs later i accepted that just wasn't realistic, Die Hard is mentioned, F/M, Kissing, Not Canon Compliant, Pining, Pre-Relationship, and Getting Together, god this was gonna only be a drabble, jeez this is just Jake and Amy being nerds for 3k words, jumps around the canon, not exactly a 5 +1, so much pining from Jake, soft, stops being canon compliant at like 2x09, they're so gentle and pure??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-30 01:20:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13939494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishycorvid/pseuds/fishycorvid
Summary: it's choices made in the gray areas of their life that define them. it's the glances over morning coffee. it's him absentmindedly brushing her hair out of her face. it's the energy between them as they bicker, emotion running under the undercurrent of meaningless words. in the end, the gray areas will always be what matters most.





	this twilight (how dare you speak of grace)

**Author's Note:**

> so i guess there's really no escape from my all-consuming need to write meaningless fluff about these two. but yeah strap yourself in lads you're here for some pining you're gonna get some pining

It’s eleven PM and they’re still at the damn precinct. The fluorescent lights feel too bright and harsh for this time of night, and the only noise in the whole precinct is the scratching of Jake and Amy’s pencils as they fill out the police report for their latest crime, some (insignificant? Can you call a major crime insignificant?) murder on the edge of their jurisdiction that had taken maybe three minutes for them to solve. 

“Jake,” she says, and her eyes are suddenly narrowed.

He lifts an eyebrow. “What?” 

“You’ve marked down the wrong information on your paperwork, idiot. C’mon--” she wheels her way over, chair squeaking awkwardly against the linoleum of the precinct floor. It’s late at night, and he just wants to get this goddamn paperwork done; he’s checked all the boxes, filled out physical descriptions, scribbled down the cause of death. 

“How do you even know, Santiago?” Jake mutters, rubbing at his eyes as her chair scrapes into place beside his, armrest to armrest. “You watching me fill out my paperwork?” 

(The first time this happened, it was a few days after she’d transferred to the nine-nine: 

“Peralta.” 

“Oh my God, Santiago, what are you going to scold me about this time? 

“You just checked the box that said the perp was a male. She was quite clearly a woman, and if you want to double check, she’s in that holding cell--” 

“OKAY, OKAY! I’ll fix it! Jeez.” 

But by then she’d gotten a challenging look in her eyes, and she’d snatched the papers out of Jake’s hand before he could retaliate, and smirked as she erased his haphazard pencil marks. 

That was the first time he’d seen her smirk. Unfortunately for his pride, he’d be seeing that _ha, got you again, Peralta_ smirk way too much in the coming years.)

“Obviously.” Amy rolls her eyes, her annoyance belied by an affectionate (if a little exasperated) smile. “You checked the box wrong which isn’t exactly a new thing with you; you said the cause of death was _accidental_ here and you just spent the last five minutes rambling about how it was so _clearly_ a murder, such an _easy solve--”_

“Okay, okay, point taken!” Jake says, flinging up his arms, but Amy’s already pulled the paperwork over to her side of the desk, blowing a strand of hair that’s come loose from her ponytail out of her eyes. Predictably, it settles back where it was before, but she seems too tired to care, so it’s really not too shocking that Jake brushes the hair out of her line of vision and tucks it entirely too gently behind her ear, before he can even think to stop himself. 

She looks up and says nothing, just tilts her head slightly, lips almost infinitesimally parted. Jake swallows, throat suddenly too dry.

“It was in your way.” He makes a weak attempt at a joke: “Didn’t want you re-making the same mistake I did.” 

Maybe because it’s late at night, maybe because she’s doing his paperwork, maybe because their arms are resting warmly against each other, maybe because the whole thing feels so damn domestic for two detective coworkers _(friends? Yeah, definitely friends,_ Jake thinks, and the idea gives him a warm feeling), but she humors him, chuckles lightly and, briefly, rests her head on his shoulder. 

“Thanks, Jake,” she says, and there’s this soft smile on her face that makes Jake want to-- God, he doesn’t even know. Hug her? Make her laugh again?

“Sure,” he mumbles. “Anytime.” 

\----

One night, he’s crossing to the precinct’s elevator when Amy grabs at his shoulder. She’s been doing that a lot more, recently-- grabbing him to get him to stop doing something, touching his shoulder lightly as she passes by his desk, slapping him when he says something crude _(funny_ , Jake insists). Either way, it hasn’t gone unnoticed. 

“Listen, I’ve been wondering-- wanna go to the gym with me and spar? It’s been too long since I’ve done something like that.” She flicks the hair out of her eyes with a toss of her head, and Jake is reminded of that moment from what’s now almost a year in the past (God, he just can’t shake her; keeps thinking about the brush of his fingers against her cheekbones, the light smattering of freckles too light to see from a normal distance, the softness of her hair. He shouldn’t keep thinking, maybe, but he does.)

“If you want an excuse to beat the shit out of me, feel free, but make sure you avoid the face,” he grins, winking at her for emphasis as he shakes himself out of his thoughts. 

Amy, being Amy, blows right past it: “Language, Peralta. That a yes or a no?” She’s doing that thing again, chin tilted up and arms crossed that Jake finds a mixture of adorable and deeply attractive. He sighs to himself. 

“That’s a yes, Santiago. You know I can’t resist a challenge. Ten bucks says I hold out longer than you?” 

Amy grins in a way that makes him think he’s made a mistake. “You’re on, Peralta.” 

“Ooooh, loser also has to disobey Holt’s next direct order to them,” Jake adds, lips quirking up into a smirk. 

Amy visibly pales. _“Jacob, don’t even joke about that.”_

Jake snorts and shoulders his bag, stepping into the elevator as Amy trails after him, still looking vaguely stunned. He has to snicker, and Amy shoves him more strongly than he’d expected, slamming his back into the metal wall. And goddamnit, he’s not proud of it, but his breath hitches just a little bit when Amy smirks at him, arms crossed, triumph in her gaze. 

“Worried, Peralta?” 

Awkwardly, he smiles. “Never. Head first, can’t lose.” 

Santiago rolls her eyes. 

Once they’re in the ring, he’s actually a little nervous about the whole affair-- Amy’s changed into a sensible tank top and gym shorts, but, you know, they’re still _shorts and a tank top_ and that’s more than Jake’s seen of her in maybe ever. She catches his eye as she dons her gloves and smiles slightly at his dazed expression before looking away quickly. Jake swallows hard and returns his attention to his own gloves. Also he’s uneasy because she probably could and will kick his ass, but right now that's taking a backseat to other types of imminent doom.

After that, they spar. 

At first, Jake is pretty sure he’ll be fine. He loses himself in the familiar movement; it reminds him of the Academy days, where the times were hard and the days were long, but of course now he looks at them through the rose-tinted lens of nostalgia. Now, it’s almost like sparring with Rosa, except Amy has a different power to her. Rosa was quick and aggressive and pulled no punches; Amy has insane technical skills and is measured and analyzes his weak points. 

“I haven’t done this in ages,” he defensively wheezes at one point, jumping out of reach of Amy’s blows. She grins, hair sticking to her forehead with sweat, and his fingers twitch in his gloves. 

“Clearly. You gonna concede defeat yet?” She posturing now, head tipped and feet planted, but surely, Jake thinks, she’ll be tiring. 

“Nah. Come at me, Santiago.” 

She is quiet for a moment, smirk still lingering on her face, and he notices a second too late how she subtly drops into a fighting stance. By the time he figures it out, it’s too late, and she catches him in the jaw before she drops her other fist to hit him in the stomach. Amy leaps back before he can retaliate, a proud smile on her face. 

“C’mon, Peralta,” she taunts. “Scared?” Santiago stalks closer, hands loose at her sides, steps even and calculated. He doesn’t raise a hand to strike at her, even though she’s in his range now, and her stance is too relaxed to be of any use if he moves quick enough. Slowly, he backs up until he hits the wall of the training room. She’s nose to nose with him. He can feel her breath on his lips. She repeats it again: “Scared?” 

“No,” he croaks, but doesn’t move. 

“Wanna admit defeat yet?” 

“No.” Jake Peralta couldn’t move if he tried, couldn’t even form a sentence. 

Amy’s face is entirely too close, her gaze fiery and intense, her nose almost touching his. He can see those tiny little freckles on her cheekbones, the darkness of her eyes. He cannot breathe. He doesn’t dare move. Amy rests a hand on the wall next to him, eyes still trained on his. 

“You sure?” 

“I- no. No, I’m not sure.” 

She leans back, looking, for a second, disappointed. A smirk spreads across her face, though, before Jake can think too much of it. 

“Ha! I win! Pay up, Peralta!” Amy laughs and does a victory dance, pumping her fists and dancing from foot to foot. Jake sighs and pushes himself off the wall, hands falling to his sides. 

“Whatever, Ames.” A rueful smile he’s not aware of flickers across his face. “You got me.” 

—-

The day after that disastrous fucking dinner with Teddy and Sophia, it’s quiet at Jake and Amy’s desk. 

After Amy broke up with Teddy and the truth came out about Jake’s time undercover, Sophia dumped him, too, citing the look on his face at dinner when he’d found out about Amy’s feelings. God, the whole thing felt absurd; it was the kind of bickering you’d see in a high school hallway, not the legitimate arguments between three fully grown detectives and a defense attorney. Once they get back to the precinct, the banter dies out as they throw themselves into their paperwork, giving each other nervous looks across their desk. They complete the paperwork and the day in total silence, fingers tapping anxiously on respective desks, erasers scratching out mistakes that they’d made. It’s a slow day. A long day. Jake is slumped in his chair, eyes drooping tiredly, a hollow feeling in his chest. He’d told Sophia he’d loved her, a last-ditch attempt to get her to stay. She’d scoffed and turned away. All told, the evening was awkward and broken and just… sad. There was no other way to describe it. 

When he gets home that night, he lies on his couch and stares at the ceiling, and, for once, is quiet. The living room is still and dark around him. There’s a tired kind of peace in his heart, belying the anger and sadness he thought he’d be feeling by now, and he closes his eyes and lets it wash through him. A tiny part of his mind laughs at him for that. 

His phone dings, the noise stark against the silent edges of the room. 

_Santiago: Hey Jake?_

_Peralta: whazzup_

_Santiago: Okay, weird request, but can you come over to my apartment? This sucks. I just want to hang out and watch movies or eat takeout or whatever. No talking about the last 48 hours._

Jake smiles ruefully, swinging his legs off his couch and grabbing his jacket as he toes on his shoes. 

_Peralta: already on my way_

When she buzzes him up and opens the door, she’s wearing sweatpants and a massive NYPD t-shirt that she probably stole from Terry years ago; it drapes off her shoulders and hangs down mid-thigh. 

“Hey,” she says, and all of a sudden, Jake is acutely aware of how tired she looks. Her eyes are still sharp and wary, but she still looks so… soft. She has circles under her eyes, and her lips are quirked into a weary smile. 

“Hey. How’re you holding up?” he asks, slowly moving through the door and into her ridiculously clean and old-fashioned apartment. 

She laughs tiredly. “Okay. Could be worse. I mean, that’s almost always true, that I could be worse, but regardless I’m not-- exceptional. I just-- I’ve been trying to make a list, subheadings and all, trying to figure out what went wrong with that relationship, itemizing everything that could have lead to this, but it all comes back to me and what’s wrong with me, and I--” she cuts herself off, and sighs, pressing the heels of her palm to her closed eyes. 

Jake wraps her up into a hug without thinking. “I ordered food from that Polish place you like on the way here. I brought some movies,” he says softly into her hair. Hesitantly, her arms curl around him, and she leans into his chest. Silently, Jake breathes a sigh of relief.

“Die Hard?” she mumbles against his shoulder, and he chuckles. 

“Aw, Santiago, you know me so well.” 

She pulls back, just enough to stare him in the eyes, and Jake is finding it hard to breathe. “Fine, we can watch Die Hard. But only the first one, and then we get to watch shitty rom-coms afterward.” Jake gasps, pretending to be affronted, eyes wide with offense. 

“Ames! You just swore!” 

She unwinds herself from him and rolls her eyes, wandering away to her couch. “I’m a grown adult, Peralta.” 

Jake chuckles and follows, flopping down on her couch (which is, annoyingly, way softer than his). “I know, I know, you were born in your sixties.” Amy shoves his shoulder, and he shoves her back, until they’re both laughing and curled into each other. Eventually, they quiet down, and they’re just looking at each other with a mix of amusement and affection and maybe even wonder, like waking up and finding that living was better than even a perfect dream. 

The doorbell rings, and Amy hauls herself off the couch, hair ruffled from their bickering and halfway falling out of its normally-meticulous ponytail. 

“Food’s here,” she calls over her shoulder, and Jake grins back at her, eyes sparkling, because maybe they’re both tired and wearing sloppy clothes and feel ridiculous and a little heartbroken, but at the same time the whole thing seems so _right,_ because if time stopped right now and he had to live in this moment his whole life he’d probably be okay with that. 

Amy sits back down on the couch, squirming her bare feet under Jake’s legs (“I get _cold,”_ she explains indignantly at his bemused expression). For a while, they just sit there and eat and watch Die Hard (which Amy has seen over thirty times since meeting Jake, and which Jake has seen too many times to even count anymore). It’s comfortable; it’s domestic; it’s affectionate. It’s Jake not being able to take his eyes off Amy’s face, illuminated by the harsh light of the television and the soft glow of the lights on in the kitchen nook. It’s Amy burrowing herself into Jake’s side and throwing a grandma-y quilt over the two of them as they bicker and talk about meaningless crap while romcoms and action movies play in the background. Eventually, as the end credits of some movie Jake’s forgotten the name of roll, everything is quiet. Amy’s head is tucked into the crook of Jake’s neck, her breath soft and warm on his collarbone. Her eyes are shut. Jake exhales, long and slow. 

_Fuck,_ he thinks, and lightly rests his chin on her head. Because it’s too soon after everything to do anything; too soon after the road trip, too soon after his going undercover and preceding romantic-stylez speech. But, goddamnit, he’s infatuated with this woman, his best friend (it’s a _tier,_ okay, not an Olympic podium, he can have more than one best friend, _Charles),_ his partner, his coworker. His Ames. (Except he knows she's not his, he's not gross, okay?) He breathes her in, feels the warmth of her arms wrapped around him, the softness of her breath, the skin pressed against his, the unruly hair curling across his shoulders and neck and cheek. There’s a pang in his chest, an actual physical pang, because he loves her too much and isn’t allowed to do anything about it. 

Jake closes his eyes, and slowly untangles himself from her. He picks her up as gently as he can and sets her down softly on her bed, tucking the covers up to her shoulders and retreating to the door. The moonlight and city lights filter in through her half-open blinds, and there’s that pang again. Then he’s crossing the room again and bending down to lightly kiss her forehead. 

He tries the words out in his head: _I love Amy Santiago._

It scares the shit out of him. (He hopes he can say it aloud someday, without being afraid of it.) 

For now, though, he’ll settle for making an itemized list, subheadings and all, titled “Why Amy Santiago is One of the Best People I’ve Ever Met, Ever”, using one of the many pens she keeps in her kitchen and a piece of lined paper that she has in bulk. He leaves it on her counter, a nondescript piece of paper with scribbled handwriting trying to be neat for once, and he tucks himself under the quilt on her couch, and goes to sleep. 

\--- 

“Jake,” a voice says distantly, and Jake groans and curls up more, heaving the blanket up over his head and squeezing his eyes tighter. “Peralta, wake up! You’re gonna be late for work.” 

“‘S nothing new, Ames,” he mumbles. She drags the blanket out of his grip and rolls him off the couch. 

“C’mon,” she murmurs, crouching over him. Reluctantly, he opens his eyes to a perfectly put together Amy Santiago and blinks sluggishly. 

“Mornin’, Santiago. Can’t I sleep a little longer?” 

Amy huffs out a laugh and rocks back on her heels. “No, unless you want to go to work wearing the same clothes you did yesterday, ‘cause if you don’t get up now, you won’t have time to change.” 

“Mmm, ‘s okay, Amy.” He blinks up at her blearily from the floor, hands still tucked up under his chin, eyes still half-closed from sleep. Affection rushes through Amy, and she half-laughs, half-sighs, grabbing his hand and pulling him to his feet. He stumbles upward and leans against her tiredly. “Aaaaamyyyyyyyy,” he whines halfheartedly. Amy laughs, bracing the palms of her hands against his shoulder. He looks so soft in this dim gray-gold light, warm and tired and so familiar to her. She'd found the list, and, God help her, she doesn't know what to do. 

And she doesn’t know why she does it, but she leans forward impulsively and pecks him on the lips, like it's habit, like it's something she does every morning before walking out the door. “Come on. We have to go, we have things to do.” She pulls back to see Jake’s stunned expression. “Oh, holy shit. What? I-- uh--- that didn’t happen! I didn’t kiss you! I’m not attracted to you! I didn’t see your list! I--” 

Jake cuts her off with another kiss, gentle and soft and slow. The light is pale around them, in the twilight hours before dawn. His hands frame her face, light and hesitant, fingers fluttering uncertainly against her cheeks. After a moment, Amy kisses him back, hands resting at his waist where his shirt has ridden up. It is sweet and a little afraid, nothing like what she’s imagined but simultaneously everything she’s imagined and more. 

“Are you-- okay?” he mumbles against her lips, pulling back just enough that their foreheads can touch. His voice is breathy with barely concealed joy and affection. 

“I’m better than okay,” she tells him, and kisses him again, fingers in his hair and breath on his lips, and she can’t help but smile. 

What’s ahead of them, she has no way of knowing, and maybe, for the first time, she’s okay with that.

**Author's Note:**

> drop me a comment or a kudos if you enjoyed it or spot a mistake! (my work is unbeta'd and unedited so.) i'm also very open to constructive criticism, and i am constantly ready to scream about b99 with someone. my tumblr is fishycorvid, hit me up


End file.
